Product Description

Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose.

In Reading Like a Writer, Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers—Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov—and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield for clever examples of how to employ gesture to create character. She cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted.

Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3054 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-01
• Released on: 2007-04-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Savard has a pleasant voice, a good vocal range and the important ability to emphasize for clarity and drama. She's especially good at the long and very varied quotes Prose has selected to illustrate the elements of close reading, i.e., paying careful attention to words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialogue, details and gesture (her chapter headings). Prose has taught writing classes for more than 20 years and published 14 books. To be a good writer—or a good reader—she argues, you must develop the ability to focus on language and explore line by line how the best writers use each element of language to create unique and powerful people and stories. She pulls out words and phrases from various authors to show us, for example, precisely how Flannery O'Connor creates the literary equivalent of a fireworks display while Alice Munro writes with the simplicity and beauty of a Shaker box. This is a an excellent listen that belongs in any reader's or writer's library next to Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Life is precious, and much of that preciousness lies in the details: the sights, the sounds, the scents we too often ignore in our busy lives. Prose makes a superb application of that concept for readers of fiction. To know how the great writers create their magic, one needs to engage in a close reading of the masters, for that is precisely what successful writers have done for thousands of years. College programs in creative writing and summer workshops serve a purpose, but they can never replace a careful reading of the likes of Austen, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Salinger, Tolstoy, and Woolf. In this excellent guide, Prose explains exactly what she means by close reading, drawing attention to the brick and mortar of outstanding narratives: words, sentences, paragraphs, character, dialogue, details, and more. In the process, she does no less than escort readers to a heightened level of appreciation of great literature. Many will want to go to the shelves to read again, or for the first time, the books she discusses. And to aid them, she thoughtfully adds a list at the end: Books to Be Read Immediately.–Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
National Book Award finalist Francine Prose (for Blue Angel) is an evangelist for the practice of improving one's writing by reading the great writers. After reading her extremely thorough and humorous analysis of works that demonstrate the highest craft of wordsmithery, it's hard not to convert to her way of thinking, though not everyone will adore her occasionally dictatorial tone or agree with her choices of who is (and isn't) "great." At the same time, she is remarkably fair-minded in her choice of subjects, from Herman Melville to ZZ Packer and Deborah Eisenberg. (And it's worth checking out her list of 117 "Books to Be Read Immediately.") Critics, many of them past or present teachers of writing, universally recommend this book not only in academic settings but also for casual readers, would-be novelists, and everyone who shares Prose's love of language.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Great concept. Poor execution
The concept is great. The product did not meet the promise. The presentation style was just too artsy-fartsy, like a bunch of undergraduate girls from the Seven Sisters, sitting around saying "Look how smart I am."

I couldn't finish the thing. It would be a great book to sleep to.

a very helpful guide to reading wisely
I'm looking to improve my writing and I came across this book and decided to give it a listen. I was surprised at how helpful and fun it was. The text was very engaging, and you can tell the author put a lot of time into making this book not only informative but also enjoyable. I now look for specific elements when I read and have discovered the things I want to improve in my own writing.

Read Well to Write Well
Author Francine Prose's latest non-fiction book Reading Like a Writer, a Guide for People who Love Books and for Those who Want to Write Them, brings to the study to literature exactly what the study of literature needs: literature. She reads a text for what it offers as a unique assemblage of words into sentences into paragraphs into chapters into volumes. The author of a great work of literature creates carefully, deliberate placing each word for meaning and effect.

To study literature this way, one needs time. Time to read slowly, to savor the words, to appreciate the gift of literature. One might also need a dictionary. And of course Strunk and White's Elements of Style--a textbook developed early in the last century to set out in the clearest, most direct terms the basic rules of grammar and punctuation and how these things combined with our carefully chosen words create style.

In its pithy way, USA Today called Prose's book "A love letter to the pleasures of reading." That's exactly what it is. It is also a love letter to the pleasure of learning to write. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of writing that makes an author's work unique--words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialogue, details, gesture. The closing two chapters offer insights into "Learning from Chekhov" and "Reading for Courage." Prose draws on works of great writers and models reading to write. That is, by reading great works carefully, a student of literature who wishes to write develops a personal database of who does what well and learning to turn to specific writers for specific help.

For example, a writer struggling to effectively communicate character through dialogue might turn to authors he knows does that well--or to Chapter 6 in Prose's book. There the writer will find a close reading of passages from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility in which she does just that. The writer can take from that reading an example of just how to.

Prose's book unhooks literature from the life-support of the classroom full of sartorial know-it-all professors with their one and only way of reading a work and their critical methods--feminist, Marxist, Freudian, sociological, and on and on--to show that the life-support is totally unnecessary; the patient breathes quite independently, thank you.

To anyone whose parents suggest he or she study something other than English in college the better to secure a good job, I say take that advice. If you love literature and want to read it well, all you really need is Prose's book.